


tell them i ain't coming back

by roundabout



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Firefly Fusion, Companion Keith, Gen, Missions Gone Wrong, Serendipity Zine, Sort Of, Undercover Missions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-16
Updated: 2019-11-16
Packaged: 2021-02-07 08:08:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21454786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roundabout/pseuds/roundabout
Summary: Control,Krolia had murmured, demure and poised and powerful through the haze of incense smoke and the steam of carefully-prepared tea.Control is the first lesson a Companion learns.Control,Keith thinks, glaring down the barrel of their guns. His fingers flex and bunch, hidden in his long sleeves, itching for the hilt of the knife strapped high on his thigh. He forces each joint to uncurl, and the tension from his shoulders, and tips his chin up. His mouth curls as both hands raise, fingers splayed and palms out, as he walks out to meet them.When an undercover mission goes wrong, Keith finds himself getting a helping hand from Captain Shirogane and his Firefly class ship Voltron.
Comments: 26
Kudos: 62





	tell them i ain't coming back

**Author's Note:**

> Alright, so, here's the thing. I created an AU/fusion for a fandom that is -- at the time of writing -- 17 years old. 
> 
> Literally no one asked for this. But boy howdy do I ever love the Firefly universe, and _boy howdy_ did I ever want this, so that's what yall got.
> 
> Enjoy!

The coarse desert grit bites through the thin soles of Keith’s borrowed sandals as he slips out from the safety of his shuttle pod and into the quiet docking bay. The hot, harsh wind of the half-terraformed moon smacks him in the face—earthy and breathtaking after long, quiet hours spent breathing the dry, canned air in deep space. He takes a moment to scan the horizon, breathing deeply. The scent of sagebrush and sweet grass swirls in his lungs; lingers at the back of his throat. It tastes like home. 

Keith nods at the squat, graying attendant who, roused from surveying the sleepy not-quite-port with glazed eyes, comes sniffing for credits. Keith’s spine straightens from his tired slouch and, with the echoes of his mother's whispered words lingering in the back of his mind, he rolls his shoulders back and forces a smile that feels foreign on his mouth. 

“This is a quick operation,” Ulaz rumbles in Keith’s ear, as Keith shuffles his wine-dark silk robes around his shoulders and drops a smattering of thin silver coins into the attendant's palm. The small, flesh-toned comms unit tucked in Keith’s ear behind his carefully combed mess of hair hisses and spits, static interference bleeding down the line before Ulaz’s voice trickles back in. “We move quickly, in and out, informational retrieval only.”

Keith hums and bows his head, just slightly, and makes a show of tucking a single lock of hair behind his free ear the way he’d practiced over and over in the mirror. His fingertips linger on the man’s outstretched palm, calloused tips dragging from the center down the line of his middle finger, and the man flushes dark. His eyes slide up and down Keith’s body, drinking him in, as his tongue darts out to wet his lips. It’s almost galling, to smile and demur for a stranger, but there is something darkly entertaining in the way the man stumbles, tripping over his own feet as he twists to watch Keith walk away. 

Keith straightens his shoulders, pausing at the edge of the dock to shift his silks one last time. They’re heavier than they look, settled around his shoulders, and more difficult to move in than he would like. Keith spares a moment to miss the simple dark Marmora uniform, and sweeps down the dusty path that leads to the centre of town. 

He's incredibly conscious of the fact that he is an oddity here — drawing eyes as he ducks around cattle pens and scattered, dirty settlers, heedless of the way his sandals and the hem of his robe kick up dust as he moves. They’re caked in a fine layer of grit as he carefully picks his way through the town, mindful of his posture and his hair and his smile and his silks under the weight of their attention. He has a job to do — one his mother and his people are counting on him to complete. He’s not about to throw that away because he’s uncomfortable.

Slowly, he winds out of sight of the docks before cutting a hard left, making his way through a wide, brown field toward the fat, squat building sitting alone at the edge of town.

The Marmora contact in this part of the ‘verse is a short, slender man with small, sharp features, known only as Horowitz and elbow deep in illegal dealings. He’s small time, in the sense that he’s smart enough to move less stolen goods and more information, but he is an invaluable asset while working against the tight control of the Alliance. Even here, right on the Outer Rim, his network of information flows in from the junker ships and looters puttering around Rim planets all the way from the luxury liners and politicians back in the Core. 

Recalling the satellite map Ulaz and Thace had pored over in the weeks leading up to touchdown, Keith follows an overgrown footpath up over a hill and through a small copse of dry, sickly looking trees to find Horowitz’s residence. 

The house is a small one, nestled out of the way with a small herd of scraggly-looking cattle grazing around it. The lights are off and the front door is locked tight when Keith reaches it, so he cuts around the back, remembering Kolivan’s quiet briefing on Horowitz’s negotiation tactics. 

Keith finds him behind a tall, rickety sun-bleached wooden fence covered with gnarled brown creeping branches that twist around each slat and reach up to climb the back of his house. Horowitz stands, straight-backed with his hands folded in his sleeves, watching a pair of armed traders wearing twin heavy brown coats scowl at him. A lonely metal crate sits, dented and dinged, in the bald patch of dusty lawn between them. There is a small frown on his face, and his right foot taps a subtle rhythm in the dirt.

“Captain Shirogane,” he says, voice firm, “Allura. You  _ know _ I don’t deal in anything that is more trouble than it’s worth, and I don’t ever pay more than the initial agreed upon price. I’m not about to pay any more platinum for your trouble.”

Keith’s breath hisses out through his clenched teeth as hands wander to hips, palming the holsters of weapons. Horowitz was supposed to be alone, and they were supposed to exchange information quickly, over tea to give them both an alibi. This — dealing with smugglers and traders — was never part of the plan. 

A dried twig snaps like a bone beneath Keith’s silken slipper. The sound echoes out across the clearing, drawing heated eyes right towards him. Shirogane and Allura’s hands snap up, weapons primed and pointed at him, fingers on the trigger before their eyes ever mark him. Keith grinds his teeth and clenches his fists in his sleeves, biting back the instinctual need to duck, to weave out of the way and hide, to retaliate in kind.

_ Control _ , Krolia had murmured, demure and poised and powerful through the haze of incense smoke and the steam of carefully-prepared tea.  _ Control is the first lesson a Companion learns _ . 

She hadn’t rapped his knuckles or boxed his ears so much as smarted his pride as she deigned to teach him a little of what she knew. She just cut him a blank, unimpressed look when he fumbled his way through the movements she made look effortless and graceful; sipped her tea with steady hands and raised one brow when he bristled and chewed his anger like he was cutting teeth. His mother didn’t express her disapproval of his decision to fill her missing place on this mission, simply set forth with grim determination to beat years and years of knowledge and study and practice into his head in a matter of a few short weeks. 

_ It was the first lesson we learned on Sihnon _ , she had insisted, reaching across the table to steady Keith’s hand as the tea he was pouring sloshed from the cup and onto its saucer,  _ and the last _ .

_ Control _ , Keith thinks, glaring down the barrel of their guns. His fingers flex and bunch, hidden in his long sleeves, itching for the hilt of the knife strapped high on his thigh. He forces each joint to uncurl, and the tension from his shoulders, and tips his chin up. His mouth curls as both hands raise, fingers splayed and palms out, as he walks out to meet them. With the smell of incense and his mother’s perfume in the back of his throat, he lets his hips sway as he walks. 

“I’m just here to meet with Horowitz,” Keith says, staring Shirogane dead in the eye. Keith pointedly ignores the gun as his heartbeat picks up in his chest. The hot wind whistles through the brittlebrush and sticks grit to the sweaty skin at Keith’s nape. It’s only sort of a lie.

“What business does a Companion have on the Outer Rim?” Shirogane asks, voice dry and weary. The puckered scar cutting across the bridge of his nose pulls and wrinkles slightly as both his brows raise. “Don’t see many of you outside of the Core.”

Keith isn’t quite able to suppress the deadpan unimpressed look that steals across his face. Shirogane pauses, staring at him expectantly before he blinks, cheeks tinting a faint, pretty pink. The corner of Allura’s mouth twitches, faintly, skyward. 

“I think,” Horowitz says, loud and diverting. He’s sweating, just a touch, at his temples and his nervous hands have begun fiddling with the chain at his throat where it disappears under the collar of his loose, linen shirt. “It’s best we wrap this up. I have matters to attend to elsewhere.”

“We aren’t going anywhere until we get fair compensation for the job,” Allura says, voice sweet as sugar but stern as steel. The tip of her soft leather boot nudges the crate's corner. “It’s pure, premium, A-grade foodstuffs, Horowitz. Vitamins, proteins, immunization supplements. Everything people need to thrive.”

Shirogane leans forward, intent. His gun never wavers. “Went through a lot of trouble to get this stuff too. And it is the good stuff. I think my crew deserves compensation for their efforts. Unless, of course, you don’t  _ have _ the money. In which case, Whitefall isn’t too far from here. I’m sure Patience would be mighty interested should we take our business elsewhere.” 

The fingers coiling in the chain around Horowitz’s neck pull it higher and higher with each anxious loop, until Keith can just see the flash of the corner of a holokey glinting in the evening sun. He itches to shed off the weight of his silks, sprint across the clearing to pluck the data from the man's chest, and make off back to the ship, back to the resistance. 

_ Control,  _ his mother had said, eyes narrow and unimpressed as Keith rushed his way through every tea pour, every dance, every undressing.  _ And patience. _

Keith’s teeth sink into the meet of his cheek. He waits.

Horowitz’s brows knit and his mouth opens as if to speak, but the static hiss of a bad communication line cuts him off. Shirogane keeps his eyes and gun trained on Keith, but Allura reels off to the side. Her gun arm falls as she focuses on her comms unit. The placid expression crumples right off her pretty face as she murmurs something that Keith doesn’t quite catch.

“Allura.” Shiro’s voice is low and pointed as he glances between Horowitz, and Keith, and the crate.

_ “Ta ma de _ ,” Allura spits after a moment, face gone ashen and bloodless. She takes another step back and cuts her gaze up to the sky. The pad of one long finger digs into the dip of her ear, listening to someone. There is something grim and fatalistic in her voice when she says, “We’re humped, captain.”

Keith follows her stare, trying not to wince as his own communicator hisses and pops in his ear canal. Squinting, he can just make out dark specks like a swarm of blackflies crowding the upper atmosphere above the town. At first, he can’t quite place them — they’re too large and too high up to be birds or insects, but then sunlight catches on the red-painted nose of the big, black crafts, and something cold and dark settles into Keith’s gut. Dread floods his body as realization hits.

“Abort,” Ulaz snaps, loud and sudden enough in Keith’s ear to make him jump. Under his sharp tone, Keith can hear the wail of proximity alarms and the rattle of something impacting the ship’s hull. “All operatives, abort mission. Find anything spaceworthy and fall back. Do not attempt to return to this ship.”

“Shit,” Keith breathes, as the ships sink lower in the sky and the grotesque twist of their metal decorations glint in the sun. Despite the blazing warmth of the desert evening, his body is ice cold. Ulaz’s voice cuts out, the connection in Keith’s ear giving way to dead silence, and something like grief crests over him in a wave. “Reavers.”

“Reavers,” Shirogane repeats, gun falling to his side as he turns his shuttered face to the sky. He blows out a breath that’s shaky at the edges. 

Horowitz swears, quiet but vicious, and tosses a bag of coin from the folds of his jacket in Shirogane’s general direction. Then his eyes meet Keith’s from across the lawn. The chain on which the holokey sits snaps with a quick yank, and then it’s cutting through the air towards Keith as Horowitz stoops and scoops the crate up into his arms. Keith barely catches it, fumbling with fear-numbed fingers to get it tucked into the hidden pocket sewn into his robe. He considers, briefly, swallowing it instead, because the information on the key could save hundreds, thousands of lives, but if the Reavers catch his scent, it won’t matter what he has done with the information — the Marmora resistance would never receive it. 

“Come on,” Shirogane says, half-skipping in haste as he backpedals through the gate and toward the nearby trees. He stashes the bag of money in his coat and unceremoniously shoves his firearm back into its holster. He slows, lingering just outside the fence. “We’ve got to rabbit, and we’ve got to do it now. If they notice us, we’re dead.”

They both watch as Horowitz silently quirks a dead man’s smile before disappearing down the hidden entrance to a small, dark tunnel beneath his house. Keith finds himself hoping he’s got a bunker or something down there to hole up in — or, at least, a place to end it all before the Reavers get their hands on him. 

It takes Keith a precious, long moment to realize that Shirogane is lingering near the property, waiting for him to follow, but when he does, he hikes up his silks — heedless of things like dirt or modesty — and flat-out sprints toward the trees. 

The bright shock of Allura’s silvery hair is already disappearing into the trees at the edge of the clearing when Keith reaches it, Shirogane at his side. Keith can just barely hear her voice, calling over her comms, “Full burn, baby, get her ready, we’re coming in hot.”

Deep in the heart of the copse of trees, hidden behind a mess of dried underbrush and detritus, sits a battered looking hoverbike. Its sleek, curved body is rusted and patched with old parts, but it purrs like a dream when Shirogane slides onto its back and kicks the ignition. Allura, waiting in the trees, reaches out and snags Keith’s arm, hauling him bodily through the dead wood and onto the vehicle between her and her captain. Keith has barely fisted the worn leather of Shirogane’s brown duster when the engine snarls and the craft lurches forward. Inertia would have dragged him backwards, head over heels off the back of the bike, if Allura’s firm body wasn’t there behind him, bracketing him in. They burst out into the clearing, eastbound, full throttle. 

Panicked shouting and the chatter of gunfire bloom and burst in the distance as the Reaver ships begin to touch down. Smoke and ash start to rise as a series of fires break out, billowing up and blackening the golden evening sky. The engine whines, overtaxed and overheating as Shirogane does not let up on the throttle, and the frame rattles as something snaps inside.

“Come on,” Allura mutters into Keith’s shoulder. Her fingers press bruises into his hips as her left heel thunks the frame. A little louder, a little more insistently, she repeats, “Come  _ on _ .”

Shirogane banks hard, cutting a sharp turn to the left, tipping so far sideways that their knees nearly brush the ground. Allura’s silver hair whips Keith in the face when she turns to glance anxiously over her shoulder. All at once, her breath leaves her in a rush, audible even over the sound of the wind. Allura’s body goes tense against his back. 

Keith doesn’t look back.

“Lance, Pidge, Hunk,” Shirogane barks, leaning forward over the handlebars. The white-knuckle grip Keith has on his duster drags both Keith and Allura forward with him. It’s then that Keith notices that the ground in front of the bike is rapidly disappearing — the horizon is rushing closer as the ground drops off and gives way to wide open sky. Keith can feel his eyes widening, heart jumping into his throat. “Doors open, we need a welcoming committee.”

Bullets ping the dirt on either side of the bike. Allura twists back once more, knees pinching around Keith’s hips as she tugs her blaster out of its holster and sends a volley of shots behind them. Keith can feel the jolt of the recoil through her body, and hears the deep, guttural rumble of a scream far too close for comfort. Another three shots, and Keith hears the squeal of metal twisting, and the familiar dull, dragging thud of a hovercraft bottoming out.

Then, all at once, the clearing ends. 

The engine whines, propelling them forward through a moment of weightlessness, before Keith’s heart lurches up into his throat and the hoverbike drops into freefall. Keith swears, hollering something that gets lost in the rush of wind, and then a battered old junker, a Firefly class ship, bursts into view, bay doors blown wide. 

The bike and all its occupants tumble inside, skidding over the grated floor of the cargo hold. Pain shoots up the line of Keith’s spine as he’s thrown from the back, out of Allura’s arms. He tucks his chin to his chest and tries to curl into a proper roll, but his limbs are awkward and slow to respond, encased in the unfamiliar weight of his Companion outfit. His shoulder slams against the grating hard enough to tunnel his vision down to pinpricks. The breath is knocked out of his lungs as he hits a long, metal storage crate with enough force to jostle it in its restraints. Blood wells up on Keith’s bare palms where the skin has been scraped back. Keith groans as the entire world spins around him.

Sparks fly as the hoverbike continues to slide deeper into the hold, fizzling out against the metal floors and walls as the interior doors clunk shut behind them. From somewhere to the right, he can hear the captain groaning. He swears, something low and filthy, before huffing out a short laugh. Keith’s head tips to the side, blinking the hair out of his eyes, and watches Allura snort ungracefully, sharp smile pulling at her mouth as she smacks the Captain right in the stomach. 

“You nearly missed,” she says, voice too fond and bright with adrenaline to sound properly annoyed. Her hair is a wild halo around her head, curls whipped loose and frizzy with the wind. “Warn me, next time.

Metal grinds against metal as the exterior bay doors slide shut. Over the noise, a crackling intercom bursts to life. A smooth voice, pitched high with false levity and tight with what must be panic, says, “Hold on everybody, things are about to get bumpy. Hunk, Pidge, if you want us to make it out of here without becoming Reaver meat puppets, give me everything you’ve got now!” 

The engine whines in response, and the whole ship shudders. Everyone and everything in the cargo hold shifts hard toward the back as the frame shudders and the ship hard burns out of atmo. Everything not lashed down knocks about, rolling Keith, Shirogane, and Allura around like marbles in a blender. Keith’s ears pop as they break away from the planet and continue to accelerate out. The tang of hot metal and engine grease and ozone that lingers in the hold when he sucks in a deep, steadying breath is familiar, and settles something in his chest. 

There is a clunk of metal and plastic against the grating as Shirogane pushes himself up with one hand. He staggers, just a little, as he struggles to his feet, but he’s grinning as he makes his way across the hold. He towers over Keith, before offering out his hand.

After a beat, Keith takes it. His blood makes his grip a little slippery, but Shirogane tugs him gently to his feet regardless. The servos in his arm click and whir with the movement. When Keith is firmly upright, Shirogane reaches out and brushes a little dust off the ruby shoulder of Keith’s silks. The little action kickstarts Keith’s brain, and he straightens his shoulders out of his slouch, falling back into the practiced stance his mother had beaten into him. A little panic curls in his stomach, chasing the high of survival — his comms unit is dead in his ear, he has no way to get back to the Marmora, and he on a foreign ship full of people who believe he’s a working Companion. He has absolutely nothing left to do other than roll with it.

“Well, Companion,” Captain Shirogane says, grinning to beat the devil. “We’re alive. Welcome aboard Voltron.”

**Author's Note:**

> Come yell with me on  
[twitter](https://twitter.com/aroundab00t)  
[pillowfort](https://www.pillowfort.io/roundabout)  
[tumblr](http://roundab00t.tumblr.com)


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